The Wash up (Part 2)

The Defensive Specialist is back to finish the end of season clean up. A number of emails have filtered into the Deep in the Hole inbox asking specific questions about certain clubs / franchises. The Defensive Specialist’s new goal is to rally a couple of General Managers and pick their brains over some of these issues. If you have any questions you’d like to have answered by your franchises big cheese, fire them into thedefensivespecialist@gmail.com and the Defensive Specialist will see what he can do in terms of getting some first hand insight.

Righto, the Defensive Specialist left the fans hanging by splitting the last post in two. As you’ll recall from Part 1  (http://deepinthehole.blogspot.com/2010/02/wash-up.html), the Defensive Specialist got busy breaking down some of the key issues that came out of the 2010 Claxton Shield season to see how they may affect the upcoming ABL. Lets get back into it with Part 2:

Schedule

The 2010 schedule saw each team play 24 games spanning from Thursday (games in Perth) to Saturday. The games being held on Friday evening and a double dip on Saturday allowed most guys to hold down jobs and maintain careers (if they aren’t professional baseball players). The Perth players complained that they were typically forced to travel on a Friday morning and as a result of Western Australia being a backwards state populated by people concerned about their curtains fading and the cows not milking, they were adversely affected by day light savings, often only arriving hours before batting practice was scheduled to commence. Obviously not the optimal pre-game preparation.

The ABL will have more games packed into the schedule, forcing the season to be longer, with games mid week. This will clearly affect non-professionals who will either need to cut back on their working days (and salary) or resign if they wish to play in the league. The Defensive Specialist has already spoken with a number of key players who fear that their national competition days are over as they are a little older and now must focus on developing a career outside of baseball.

Another question to consider with an expanded season is what sort of crowd can teams expect to pull with games spanning Thursday, Friday and Saturday? Perth was the only team to host games on a Thursday and seemed to manage decent crowd support so perhaps weekday games won’t be a major issue.

Players

As mentioned above, the ABL may see some non-professional stalwarts hang up the spikes due to work and time commitments. The Defensive Specialist is predicting that you’ll see the league get younger as professional players use the opportunity to get more game time and experience.  On top of that, you’ll likely see less talented, younger non-professionals who aren’t cursed with having to work for the man (university types or those less concerned with career at this stage of their lives) seize the chance to play in a national league.

The Defensive Specialist is really hoping that Major League clubs see the ABL as a viable opportunity for their prospects and start sending them down under. In the first incarnation of the ABL, we saw a number of franchises align with MLB clubs and take on 2-3 prospects each year who generally bolstered the ball club and enhanced the league.  An offseason league in an established, English speaking country is a solid place to send prospects so hopefully each Australian franchise can get loaded up with studs and jack the quality of the league up as quickly as possible.

With the league being sanctioned by Major League baseball and the standard being higher, you may also see a number of Australian pro’s who chose to play offseason baseball in more established leagues overseas return to their homeland. This influx of established Aussie pro’s would bolster the talent levels and provide the league with greater credibility.

Alright, the Defensive Specialist is about ready to close the book on season 2010. If you have any questions or queries you’d like the Defensive Specialist to fire off to the leagues GM’s by all means send them through. Remember, the Defensive Specialist is keeping the competitive juices flowing by establishing an AFL Dream Team league and is welcoming all challengers in the 2010 season. Register your team at http://afl.virtualsports.com.au/ and enter league code 625080.

The Defensive Specialist put out the call last post for Australia’s international contingent to contribute some insight into their baseball experiences abroad. Already two youngsters have put fingers to keyboard and supplied some outstanding prose that the Defensive Specialist will start posting as of Friday morning. If you’re a minor leaguer, college player, professional umpire or even a big leaguer, send your contributions through and the Defensive Specialist will give you a window to Australian baseball fans.